Welcome to USNORTHCOM, Mr. Orwell

The article discussed below comprises a comment on a Pakistani forum; as such, its English is understandably imperfect, but although I do not endorse every opinion it contains, it is quite intelligible and articulates some predictions regarding U.S. antiterrorism strategy/foreign policy/military interventions that make an uncomfortable amount of sense.

Terrorism

Wars

Iraq War

The author compares the U.S. and its prosecution of continuous warfare since the end of World War II with the superstates Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia as described in George Orwell’s prophetic dystopian classic, 1984. These metanational entities — whose ideologies and elites were in principle completely different but fundamentally identical in practice — enslaved and plundered resources from the people of the Disputed regions of Africa, southern Asia and the Middle East while distracting their respective citizens with a revolving narrative in which, at any given time, one superstate was allied with a second against the third in a bury-go-round of interminable warfare.

And yet, of course, the Ministry of Truth could blithely remind the populace in the protagonist’s time: “We have always been at war with Eastasia.” Much as we have always been at war with the God-misquoting terrorists of Al-Qaida. Or was that with the godless communists? And where will we find our next war, and our next? For there is no shortage of potential anointed enemies: Iran, Yemen, Syria, Libya, even Saudi Arabia and nuclear-armed Pakistan and North Korea; as future essays will explore, the Pentagon has drawn plans for campaigns against all of them.

When will the U.S.’ wars end? Just as soon as the greed of the military-industrial complex runs out, and as soon as war ceases to rally the oppressed to the defense of their oppressors.